


I Was Your Hero (But Not Anymore)

by screamingatstars



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Gen, Missing Scene, Spoilers, The Creativity Split
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:48:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23973292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screamingatstars/pseuds/screamingatstars
Summary: After being shut down and leaving early, Roman goes on a journey into his- and his brother’s- realm.Spoilers for Putting Others First.
Relationships: Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders & Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders
Comments: 9
Kudos: 71





	I Was Your Hero (But Not Anymore)

**Author's Note:**

> I know I’m not the first person to have this idea, but I immediately wanted to write this after watching the episode, and I didn’t hold myself back on going more extra.

_ How can we trust him? _

_ He’s evil!  _

_ If our goals aligned with his, what would that say? _

Roman was far deeper into the Imagination than he had ever strayed before. The last of his Disney-esque castles and villages and towers were far behind him, long since out of sight. Stretching before him was nothing but a vast, empty wasteland: the no-man’s-land between his own realm and his long-forgotten twin’s. 

_ You’re supposed to be good. _

_ You can’t- _

The layer of sand and dust that covered the ground was perfectly smooth and undisturbed. Each step he took plunged his entire leg into two decade’s worth of buildup, sending a small cloud of fine material puffing up around him. By now, his boots were filled with grit, weighing him down, trying to keep him stuck in the between. 

_ I thought I was your hero. _

Still, he trudged on, one excruciatingly slow step at a time. His mind was stunningly quiet, cleared of all the video ideas and story concepts that always filled it when he was in his own realm. Here, there was nothing but the endless desert, the blank sky, and a lifetime of memories to reflect on. Which, driven by the betrayal festering in his heart, he did.

The beginning: A haze of faint recollection, like remembering a dream. Almost more of a suggestion, really; of a single Imagination and a single master. A flash of riding on horseback across a battlefield. One image of a fantastical sea monster, simultaneously both grotesque and beautiful. Brief glimpses in mirrors of a dark-bladed sword, a golden sash, a crown set with red and green jewels.

Then, later, a restless burning in their chest. Conflicting emotions and desires. Pacing the same room endlessly, ripping their hair out, voices insisting in their mind until-

An agonized scream. A flash of impossibly bright light, followed by darkness. Pain. 

He remembered the rest as clearly as if it had happened twenty minutes ago, instead of twenty years. The sense of loss, settling into his bones, never to fully leave. A warm, soft hand and a familiar boy in a blue polo, helping him off the ground and guiding him away from the ruins of a palace. Though he didn’t know it at the time, there was also his twin, his other half, screaming in the distance for him to come back. The confusion and the questions he asked, soaking up the answers he got and cementing them as truth.  _ You’re the good one. It’s all going to be okay now. We love you. _

His beginning… and also his end.

He almost didn’t notice when something new peeked over the horizon. It wasn’t until Remus stood directly in front of him, similarly dazed and covered in dust, that he snapped out of his reverie. 

“What are you doing here?” The words slipped out before he could think. 

Remus, for once, didn’t bare his teeth or grin as he answered.

“Same as you, brother dear.”

The humming in his chest got louder. That pull, even stronger now than when it first appeared, when both of them realized what Deceit not being evil really meant.

Because if Janus wasn’t evil, and they weren’t ethically compromised with his input, and there was no such thing as black and white when it came to the world… what did they even exist for?

“There’s no point in having a prince and a duke, when you could have a king.”

Either of them could have said it. It no longer mattered. Here, in the very center of the Imagination, there was no Prince Roman, no Duke Remus. No false sense of good and bad that had created this emptiness all those years ago, splitting Creativity down the middle.

The two brothers reached out in unison, mirror images meeting. Black and white, good and evil, loved and hated. 

Two halves of a whole, reconnected.

By the time Patton came looking for Roman, it was far too late. The Imagination was a completely new place, the desert dividing it gone.

And waiting to meet Morality at the entrance was none other than King Creativity himself, the red and green glimmering in his crown the only trace of who he used to be.

Romulus was back from the dead.

  
  



End file.
